


She’s Never Not In Your Heart

by Pink_and_Velvet



Series: Hold Tight, Onto Daddy’s Bracelets [10]
Category: Duran Duran, The Power Station (Supergroup)
Genre: A/B/O verse, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Blackouts, Bloodplay, Break Downs, Concerts, Developing Relationship, Drugs, Falling In Love, Fluff, Kissing, Longing, M/M, Men Crying, Morning After, Parenthood, Play That Fucking Bass, Sick Fic, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22664680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_and_Velvet/pseuds/Pink_and_Velvet
Summary: No matter how many times he did it, how routine it became, he would continue to be surprised. Continued being tortured by why he kept leaving.
Relationships: Simon Le Bon/John Taylor (Duran Duran)
Series: Hold Tight, Onto Daddy’s Bracelets [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573288
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	She’s Never Not In Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, this piece proved a struggle, here it is! More Baby Taylor Le Bon cuteness. Enjoy! 💖🙈

_Wednesday, 28th August 1985  
Get It On! Tour_

Guitars shredding through the speakers, pulsing drum beats bought the stadium alight. The vocals were taught, with an edge that were screaming here they were.

**_The night you met, it was a magic start,_ **

**_All the connections were made in your heart._ **

****

Performing, the most perfect high of his life was now worse than just another high.

**_Following you everywhere, you could feel her eyes,_ **

**_A glimpse of somebody took you by surprise._ **

****

Swinging his bass to one side, John groaned. His mullet was riddled with sweat, stray strands falling into his eyes and his cheeks a flush scarlet. His noir satin cloak was rumpled, cream shirt sticking to slick pecs and framing his body. All the lumps and bumps needed to be hidden, submerged deep within the sea of rumpled satin, baby body locked away.

The concert was manic, full of shrill screams and rowdy cheers. He could barely hear himself think. Clinging aimlessly to Andy’s killer guitars, John fought with himself to keep addressing the crowd, to pluck his strings and to keep going. And going.

Barely twenty minutes in and already John was feeling faint. Late nights, little sleep through the so-called ‘nights’ and lack of his beloved unmentionables to force him through it all, showed in his stance: his bleary eyes and hunched spine were unavoidable, too prominent.

Barbarella was no handful yet it hurt, straight to the core…

**_Another place and day, now where's she gone?_ **

**_You can't forget her face, or things you left undone._ **

****

“Baby?”

Michael’s suddenly smooth vocal, hitting all the right notes were shooting through him. His tone was light yet gripping, shredding John from within.

His heart was clenching, his bottom lip trembling as the solemn track rang through _Brendan Byrne Arena_. Throughout New York.

**_Re-run memories from the start,_ **

**_The time has flown._ **

His fingers stilled, bass dropping limp from his grasp. He shook his head, blinded by the sweat. Or was it tears?

“Barbie.”

**_All the time you've been apart,_ **

**_And she's still in your heart._ **

Michael’s rich voice ploughed on, John could barely hear anything else. It was all mush, deafened by the smooth vocal as they rung louder in his head. His body was lit alight, was trembling. He could feel it in his fingers, again stopping on the track.

His vinyl was well and truly scratched, skipping its way through. Needle snapped, record cracked in two.

His fingers wouldn’t move. They couldn’t, he embraced the shrill of the silence.

**_Try as you might the recollections stay,_ **

**_Like a photographic memory of each day._ **

Bottom lip quivering, he let the rush of the intense emotion take over: running wild through his veins. It began deep within him, his aching core, before pouring out of his tear ducts. For once, John was wearing his crumbling heart on his satin sleeve.

**_You can feel her by your side in an empty room,_ **

**_And words like 'forever' you spoke too soon._ **

His bangles clinked and chimed, the only sound that he could make out. Barbie should be trying to grasp them, fingering them. Doing her beautiful little laugh as he waved them before her tiny face, huge brown eyes set ablaze upon landing on the gleaming silver that contrasted the harsh black. That bangle, the one riddled with noir stones and rich diamanté was especially for Barbie. It was innocent, something to admire. Her favourite, his favourite. Lighting up his pasty skin. Lighting up his drug flush skin.

**_Re-run memories from the start._ **

His mind was running wild, plunging deep into a dark and dreary subconscious that was only lit by her spark. Her flame. The way it had been for nine months, for the few weeks that she had been the light of his life.

**_The time has flown._ **

John felt terrible, basking in his guilt. He should never have been on the road; should never have continued the tour. Simon was with him some nights and more often than not he felt the strain of the separation, barely able to think straight, caught in the crossfire of the audience’s manic cries and Barbarella’s rhythmical ones. Both tearing on his heart strings and causing him to well up.

**_Where's the ending and the start?_ **

When had John started crying?

**_She’s still in your heart._ **

****

He threw his head to the side, screaming internally as he felt the hot sting of tears burn his cheek. John swept a hand up, diamanté bangles almost slicing open his skin, hissing at the rough contact. They never did that, they never hurt him to wear. Never caught on anything and most certainly never posed any harm, to him or his baby girl.

**_She’s still in your heart._ **

Drawing away, he noticed a speck of blood staining the pristine silver. John didn’t know what hit him, head cocking up and whipping around to Michael again. The singers eyes were already blown wide, for other reasons, somehow they seemed even darker and more piercing falling back to John. He didn’t have to say a word, the tremble of his bottom lip and his whimpers voiced all he couldn’t bring himself to say. Bass still hanging lifeless, teeth clawing at his beaten fingernails saw John hit a dizzy spell. It was violent, blinding and he dabbled over in pain: clinging to his head.

John didn’t know what had hit him.

He balled over, knees a dead weight amplified by the sudden rush in guitars that he could only now hear again. Tears were streaming and the panic was maddening, John was crumbling in his own little ball of black and red, shuddering and whining at the blinding pain. At the numbness.

His head swirled and his eyes slipped shut. His hands were stuck to his hair; moistened not only by the sweat but, he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t been given the chance to see, hot fluid trickling down his fingertips then flowing down his wrists.

Prying his fingers free, desperately clinging to consciousness, John was screaming: the last bout of energy let rip into a harsh cry so loud that it drew in everyone to him.

Within moments, his world snapped itself to black.

***  
  


The touch on him was harsh, violent almost. But there was something, something screaming that they were shaking him, shaking him awake with a good intention. Whatever this was, for once, it wasn’t his fault.

Eyes working to pry themselves open, John could only groan. Lolling his head back deeper, he sensed a presence: strong and warm. Strong and inviting, with another grip on him so firm that finally he could muster the courage, the strength, to grace that body with his bloodshot brown gaze. His head was still swirling, a surging pain that was running throughout him, every stationary as he was now: barely getting a hold on where he was.

Throwing a hand across his eyes, it was immediately batted away. John couldn’t work out why but when a single digit whipped his forehead, the pain was so blinding that he yelled, it was deep and guttural, a stir from his stomach and his pulse ran hot.

His gaze was glassy; clogged by something deeper than just simply being blind. He tried to finger the bedside table for his glasses but found himself being beaten to it. Slowly, full of caution and care, they were slid onto his face. John couldn’t help but wince, the hand brushing up against his forehead as they retreated, not without cupping his cheek first.

The touch was tender, warm. Thorough. Maddening.

The hand rounded it’s way down, fingers splaying open to capture his lips and to part them. Only now could John begin to focus, tired eyes working hard to associate the face; the touches he would know anywhere.

No matter what was coursing through his veins, that touch would be personified, screaming from the rooftops to him: John knew exactly who it was.

Without word, his mouth dropped open and he was led into that welcome warmth. His breath was taken from him, his heart aflutter and his head alight, dizzy with love and desire all at once. Dizzy with what had happened. Dizzy with the prospect of what was yet to come.

Breaking away, a small bead of saliva spilling from his lips, John couldn’t hide his smile. Their foreheads touched, the breaths intermingled. John stole a final kiss before he was eased back down into the plush, limbs loose atop of the cream sheets.

Casting a glance to his side he winced, the red that littered it. A towel, so small that it could only be a face cloth. It was still damp, now warm having soaked up the blood.

John’s blood.

His gaze flung back to the figure hovering over him, the doubt and scare was blaring in his gaze. John’s mouth was moving but he couldn’t say the word, couldn’t ask why.

Simply, he was handed a mirror. It took him a couple moments to compose himself, to central his gaze and to register what he was seeing. It was still blurry, the thick rimmed frames did nothing to help for clarity. They didn’t hide anything, either.

John’s mouth dropped open, adorable overbite letting out a surprised gasp.

The cut was huge. Tearing into him, splitting his forehead in two. It was coating his skin, losing itself in the disarray that was a rumpled mullet to the left of his forehead. It was raging red, littered in thankfully clean stitches.

It all came flooding back to John. The screams, the cries and when his knees collided with the stage floor: the glass. The glass that flowed merrily around him.

It wasn’t his fault, for once.

He let that mystical voice fill him in, riding on the hitches of breath and sudden drops of tone. None of this was John’s fault, sometimes they had no choice and sometimes the audience voice was all that they could hear. He couldn’t control them, couldn’t get a handle on what they tossed his way.

Some sick bastard had lobbed a bottle of John’s once beloved _Budweiser_ his way. He had been knocked out cold, swept from the stage. It had taken four gruelling hours then a sudden familiar touch and John finally began to thaw. Stitches piecing him back together, it showed on his flush skin. His tears had dried, his forehead was still damp from the cloth: soaking his life force up.

That didn’t matter now. John’s bleary eyes were slipping shut again, overcome with such tiredness that it proved futile to try and cling to those rhythmical tones of blue and silver. Thankfully, said tones didn’t require him to stay awake either. Falling deeper into a new trance, John held out a hand. His fingers were beaten, pierced deep by his bass strings, a dry crust of blood coating them. His slick hand was immediately taken. Kissed. Each knuckle. Each and every finger was gripped tighter and massaged. 

Finally managing to find his voice, oh so close to dreaming again, John simply stated, “I _love_ you, Charlie.”

He chuckled, eyes still shut, as those tender lips lovingly caressed his tiny nose. His glasses were again slipped from him.

“Where’s the” he began, muffled by the stray hair that had fallen into his face, “.. our baby?”

There was another small giggle, full of reason and rhyme.

“She’s with Yassie downstairs, don’t worry about her now. She can’t wait to see you, daddy.”

“ _Mummy_ ” it came out bleary.

“That’s right,” it was echoed with another hearty chuckle, “mummy.”

A strong hand cupped his cheek again, a final sweet touch of affection as John was pretty much dead to the world.

***

His dreams were vivid that night, being patched up with ever growing clarity just like his forehead.

_There were records, a prized bass, a tender voice flowing through the speakers. A small cry, rhythmical giggles. Bangles clinking and chiming together._

_Barbarella was trying to grasp at them, laughing when John dangled them over her tiny face, laughing when John drew away. Her voice was beautifully haunting, it pierced deep within him and targeted his heart. She painted it with her colours; he swore that he could still feel her drum beat as though she was still twirling inside him._

That night he dreamt only of Simon, of Barbarella. His bouncing baby girl would _Hold Tight Onto Daddy’s_ , Mummy’s- whichever, _Bracelets_ , whilst John would fall deeper and deeper in love with her: each and every day.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Power Station concert in which John really did get a beer bottle to the face and is pictures with a huge scar across the left side of his forehead. Poor baby. 💖
> 
> https://madamepinkvelvet.tumblr.com/post/190771930953/shes-never-not-in-your-heart
> 
> Yeah I know, I did that before but it actually fits the canon now.


End file.
